2. It Was Only Three Months!
IT WAS ONLY THREE MONTHS!
The sun hung low over Southside—golden and lazy. The kind of light that made even pedestrian traffic look poetic, like everyone was exactly where they were supposed to be.
I sat at an outdoor table in front of Lost Books, frappe sweating against the wood, the hum of the city pressing in from one side and the soft murmurs of passersby from the other.
I stared down at my frappe, extra ice—the one drink I ordered most often here—and let my gaze drift to the shelves tucked just beyond the glass facade.
Visayan novels sat beside experimental poetry. Classics leaned against local art books and slim, self-published titles. The place looked was peaceful. Intentionally.
The bookshop was tiny but enchanting, painted green like it wanted to calm you down before you even stepped inside.
People didn’t come here to rush. They came to sit. To read. To disappear for a while.
Normally, that worked on me.
Today… not so much.
I took a sip and opened the book I was supposed to be reading, but my mind wasn’t in the pages. Instead, it was stuck on a phrase I’d said more times that I cared to admit.
“It was only three months!”
Out loud, in group chats, to strangers online, to friends who probably rolled their eyes more than once. I even said it to my reflection in the mirror—not that the mirror ever gave good feedback.
“It was only three months!”
I said it with the practiced cadence of someone trying to convince a jury. Something I could tell myself wasn’t a big deal even though it felt like a big deal to every nerve in my body.
Maybe I believed the phrase more when I first said it…
back when the wound was still raw, bleeding into everything else.
But five months later, it had become more of a mantra than an explanation.
A shield. A rehearsed lie I told myself so many times that sometimes I forgot I’d ever said anything else.
I looked up, as if the skies could deliver an answer.
I looked around.
A woman inside the shop flipped a page.
A man beside a table laughed softly.
The shop owner fixed the shelf carefully.
No epiphanies.
But then, without permission, my mind went back.
It always started the same way.
An Instagram notification.
He had replied to one of my stories—a lazy selfie I posted at midnight because I couldn’t sleep.
Victor: You are so cute.
I remembered staring at the message longer than necessary, my eternal cynic mode activating immediately.
Cute? That was suspicious already.
I checked his profile. Private, but curated. Good smile. Decent captions. Mutuals… I did not trust that much. The kind of guy who knew how to exist online without revealing too much. But he had the kind of face that made my heart react before my brain could intervene.
I didn’t believe him at first. Men didn’t just call you cute without wanting something. Usually something that happened in the dark… in bed.
Compliments were currency. Attention was leverage. I knew that. I was thirty-four, not seventeen.
So I replied casually. Detached. Strategic.
But we kept talking… and talking.
And then two weeks later, I was live on TikTok, talking to my followers, performing the polished, charming version of myself I knew so well. And then he joined the live. I saw his username enter the room.
And then suddenly, my phone buzzed.
A text came from him.
I love you.
Just like that.
No buildup. No grand speech. No warning. It just dropped into the space between screens, like it had been waiting there.
I should’ve questioned it, because two weeks wasn’t enough to earn that sentence. It wasn’t long enough to test it. It wasn’t long enough to even define what we were doing.
But for once, I didn’t analyze it. I didn’t measure it. I didn’t INTJ it to death.
That was the moment the eternal cynic stepped aside, and the hopeless romantic—who had been pacing quietly in the background for years—finally got the stage.
Then I remembered mouthing, “I love you,” back at my screen like an absolute fool.
Because he was watching.
Because it felt cinematic.
Because it felt good to be chosen.
My memory shifted again.
The drag bar.
Lights flashing red, yellow, blue. Bass vibrating through the floor. Glitter suspended in the air like it had nowhere else to land. Queens performing like heartbreak was an Olympic sport.
But even with the noise, even with the crowd pressed shoulder to shoulder, I remembered how he looked at me.
Victor’s eyes locked onto mine across the chaos. Not distracted. Not scanning for better options. Just… there.
Longing.
Intentional.
He gazed like I was the only thing in the room.
And in those momentous seconds, where the time seemed to stop, the music blurred, and the world narrowed—I fell for him.
Stupid as that.
Simple as that.
A car horn blared somewhere down the street.
I blinked.
Lost Books returned behind me. The green walls. The iced frappe sweating onto the table. The book opened in my hands, unread.
And there it was, that sharp, familiar pinch in my chest. Not overwhelming. Not roaring. Just enough to remind me that memory was a dangerous place to visit alone.
I exhaled loudly.
This was exactly why I kept myself busy.
Work. Friends. Gym. Content. Noise.
Because if I stayed still too long, my mind replayed moments like evidence in a case I kept losing.
I looked down at my drink and took another sip.
“It was just three months!”
And I almost believed it.
A little later, I went to the gym.
The place smelled of metal, rubber, and determination.
I lay flat on the bench, staring up at the barbell above me like it personally owed me an apology. My arms trembled slightly. Not dramatically, but just enough to betray the fact that I had already pushed past the weight I normally lifted.
“Up,” Mel said calmly from behind the bar.
Easy for her to say!
My hands tightened around the steel.
I pushed.
The bar rose halfway before my arms began shaking like I was reconsidering every decision I had made that afternoon.
“James,” Mel said, still calm but firm. “Finish the rep.”
“I am finishing it,” I grunted.
She stepped in and lightly guided the bar upward, just enough assistance to save my pride without fully rescuing me. The weights clicked back onto the rack with a heavy clack!
I exhaled and lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, sweat dripping on my body.
“See?” Mel said, handing me a towel. “Sometimes you just need a spotter.”
I sat up slowly, sweat rolling down my back. The gym buzzed around us—weights dropping, machines humming, someone grunting aggressively in a corner like he was trying to fight gravity.
Mel, of course, looked fine.
She stood beside the bench in black high-waisted leggings and fitted athletic top, barely winded. Her ponytail was still perfectly tight, like discipline had personally tied it for her. Her skin carried that post-workout glow people spent a ridiculous amount of money trying to recreate.
Meanwhile I looked like heartbreak had a gym membership. But still pretty.
She took a sip from her water bottle and studied me.
“So,” she said casually.
That word alone told me exactly where this conversation was going.
“So,” I repeated.
Mel leaned one hip against the rack. “Are we still pretending it was only three months?”
I wiped my face with the towel and shrugged. “It was only three months,” I said unconvincingly.
She didn’t respond right away.
Instead, she walked over to the rack of dumbbells and picked up two heavy ones like they were groceries. She set them down in front of me with a soft thud.
“Three months,” she said, “is still a lot of reps, James.”
I frowned and sat up straighter.
She crossed her arms.
“Think about it,” she continued. “Three months of texting. Three months of seeing each other. Three months of your brain and heart getting used to the same person showing up.”
I looked down at the dumbbells, then back at her.
“That’s a lot of repetition, James.”
“I can’t believe you’re comparing gym stuff to dating,” I snorted.
She tilted her head slightly.
“What I mean is,” she said, “repetition is how attachment gets built.”
I didn’t like how quickly that made sense.
Suddenly, the gym felt a little quieter.
I rubbed my calloused palms together and looked away.
“It was still just three months,” I muttered.
Mel grabbed a kettlebell and lifted it effortlessly. “Muscles don’t care how long you’ve been training.”
She raised the weight once. Twice.
Then looked directly at me.
“They care how many times you showed up.”
And apparently, I had shown up a lot.
Mel lowered the kettlebell and set it gently back on the floor.
I watched it settle there like it had just proven a point.
“You’re not sad because it was three months,” she said.
I sighed. “She’s not stopping.”
“You’re sad because you believed him.”
That landed harder.
I frowned. “That’s not—”
“James,” she cut in gently, “You don’t fall for people quickly.”
That part was true.
I crossed my arms. “I analyze… too much,” I said defensively.
“You investigate,” she corrected. “You look for patterns. Red flags. Behavioral inconsistencies. You literally build a case before you let anyone in.”
“That’s called emotional intelligence,” I reasoned.
“That’s called being suspicious,” she said calmly.
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it.
Fair enough.
Mel sat down on the bench across from me.
“So if someone got past all that,” she continued, “it means you believed them.”
I looked down.
“They didn’t just flirt with you,” she said. “They convinced you.”
My throat tightened slightly.
The gym noise crept back in—plates clanking, someone jogging loudly on a treadmill, music thumping faintly overhead.
Mel knelt and rested her hands on my knees.
“You built a routine with him,” she said. “Your brain got used to him showing up. Messages. Calls. Seeing him. That’s not just feelings—that’s conditioning. Your nervous system got used to it as a reward.”
That word stuck.
Reward.
“When that disappears,” she continued, “your brain doesn’t go, ‘oh well, that was only three months.’”
She tapped my knees lightly.
“Your brain goes, ‘where did the reward go?’”